Somalia: Mogadishu Rebuilds Despite Uncertain Peace

AFRICANGLOBE – Abdullahi Othman stoops, covered in dust and plaster, beads of sweat gathering on his forehead as he uses a shovel to mix concrete. The building above him, a towering Italian-era hotel, stands in ruin, with bullet holes running up its walls.

Two years ago, the hotel was occupied by al-Shabaab, a hard-line terrorist group, which positioned snipers on the rooftop and sent mortars flying into the slither of territory controlled by Somalia’s weak transitional government. Now labourers – not fighters – run up the Oriental Hotel’s crumbling stairwells, lugging window frames and doors, concrete and steel.

“There is a lot of work to do,” says Othman. “My life is good.”

Here in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, a sustained period of relative calm holds, allowing the city’s buildings to come back to life, thanks to a massive reconstruction effort. Labourers gather at dawn, hauling pails of stone and work tools, leaving only when the sun sets.

Scaffolding surrounds battle-scarred and derelict buildings. A local women’s group has plans to lay flower beds next to pot-holed roads. Beachside cafes have opened, serving lobster and watermelon juice. And the sounds of hammers pumping nails into wood and the scrape of paint brushes against walls now can be heard.

Mogadishu was once known as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. Its palm tree-lined streets wind through a maze of buildings shaded in Somalian architectural features – evidence of its cosmopolitan past.

In the early 1990s, as then-President Siad Barre’s regime crumbled, internecine clan warfare set in. Rival warlord oligopolies carved fiefs from a dying land, and slugged it out in endless turf wars, hammering countless bullets into Mogadishu’s buildings.

Decades of civil strife, including a major humanitarian crisis, has left this city a shell of its former self.

Yet under the scars and ruin it retains elegance, sat beside turquoise waters. Bakara Market – the city’s commercial hub – buzzes with vendors’ cries during the day, while people pack the nearby beaches.

Family Support

“I have enough money to live each day,” says Othman, as labourers nearby erect support columns for an outdoor café at the hotel. “It’s not a lot, but it is enough to survive.”

Somalia’s building expansion is providing thousands of people with work, with this one hotel employing 30 labourers.

“Because of this hotel, we are providing more than 100 people – the workers’ families – with money. This is very important,” says 43-year-old Abdulle Hussein, who has returned from Italy after 23 years to oversee the reconstruction of the hotel, which his family owns. “If we can maintain this peace, then we can invest and develop our country – this is Somalia’s chance to move past war, we cannot miss this opportunity.”

But the relative peace in the city is tempered by fears that the country could once again spiral into all-out chaos. The government was appointed by 135 clan elders last year in a process marred by political interference and intimidation, and tensions between it and some of the country’s regions – such as Jubaland, where a federalist movement is seeking recognition – persist.

And while these tensions threaten to escalate, legitimacy is being sapped from a central government seen by some analysts as one of the world’s most corrupt administrations. In 2011, a whistle-blower told the Associated Press news agency that $300m had been siphoned off by officials, while, according to a 2012 World Bank report, $130m had vanished between 2009 and 2010.

These allegations, if true, are a severe condemnation of the government’s actions as the country was gripped by a massive humanitarian crisis.

In 2011, a prolonged drought caused crops to fail and animals to die, with thousands streaming into Mogadishu in the search for food and shelter after a country-wide famine struck. Tens of thousands of children died, often victims of complications arising from acute malnutrition.

The displaced still linger in tent cities – built from scavenged scrap and sticks.

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